This article documents a positive and sizable correlation between the location of historical Christian missions and the allocation of present-day World Bank aid at the grid-cell level in Africa. The correlation is robust to an extensive set of geographical and historical control variables that...

This paper examines salary gaps by gender and nationality at the World Bank Group between 1987 and 2015 using a unique panel of all employees over this period. The paper develops and implements a dynamic simulation approach that models existing gaps as arising from differences in job composition...

Some multilateral agencies implement aid projects in a broad range of sectors, with aid disbursements showing a strong overlap with those of bilateral donors. The question then arises of why do bilateral donors delegate sizable shares of their aid to non-specialized agencies for implementation?...

The rapid growth of trust funds at multilateral development organizations has been widely neglected in the academic literature so far. Using a simple illustrative model, this paper examines the choice by sovereign donors among various trust fund options. The authors contend that the choice among...

This paper examines the micro and macro correlates of aid project outcomes in a sample of 3,821 World Bank projects and 1,342 Asian Development Bank projects. Project outcomes vary much more within countries than between countries: country-level characteristics explain only 10?25 percent of...

A number of recent studies have empirically documented links between characteristics of World Bank projects and their ultimate outcomes as evaluated by the World Bank's Independent Evaluation Group. This paper explores the in-sample and out-of-sample predictive performance of empirical models...

Many countries have expressed an interest in the size, performance and motivation of the informal sector, especially where the informal sector provides the livelihood and employment for a critical segment of the population. This essay reviews recent literature, methodologies, and relevant Bank...

To comprehend how development really happens, it is necessary to understand the evolution of its drivers and their relationship with individuals' income. This paper analyzes the expansion of access to education and basic services in Latin America and its association with the evolution of incomes...

Poverty estimates usually lag behind two years, which makes it difficult to provide real-time poverty analysis to assess the impact of economic crisis and shocks among the less well-off, and subsequently limits policy responses. This paper takes advantage of up-to-date average economic welfare...

This paper explores perceptions of distributive justice in Latin America during the 2000s and their relationship with income inequality. In line with the fall in income inequality in the region, the paper documents a widespread, although modest, decrease in the share of the population that...